Cavaliers (again) flail and fail on national TV | Opinion

“Saturday Night Live” in its early, halcyon days had the Not Ready for Prime-Time Players.

To this point of what’s been a roller-coaster season for the Cavaliers, they’ve been the NBA’s Not Ready for National TV Players.

With a 110-94 thumping at the hands of the San Antonio Spurs on Feb. 25 at Quicken Loans Arena, the Cavs saw their record in nationally televised games sink to 3-10.

For whatever reason, the Cavs this season have rendered some of their worst efforts with the eyes of the nation upon them. Two of the most embarrassing nationally televised losses came at The Q, too. They got their doors blown off on Jan. 20 by Oklahoma City, 148-124. On Feb. 4, they hit rock bottom with a 120-88 loss to Houston. Both of those games were on ABC.

Four days after the Houston beatdown, Cavs owner Dan Gilbert gave general manager Koby Altman the green light to massively re-make the roster with a series of blockbuster trade-deadline moves.

The results have been great to mostly good with the re-made roster, at least until the Spurs came to town and, again on ABC, the Cavs wilted in the second half.

A team with four-time Most Valuable Player LeBron James as its centerpiece, that has played boatloads of big games and won the 2016 NBA title while making three straight runs to the NBA Finals ought not be so prone to poor showings on national TV.

The bad news is, of the Cavs’ 23 remaining regular-season games, seven will be nationally televised.

None, however, is on ABC.

Here are other takeaways from the loss to San Antonio:

Hole in the middle

The Cavs need to find themselves a real center.

They haven’t had one since Timofey Mozgov left to sign with the Lakers before the 2016-17 season. While he was no great shakes even on his best day, Mozgov at least gave the Cavs a physical presence in the low post and some measure of defensive protection at the rim.

Tristan Thompson is a power forward playing center. So is Larry Nance Jr. Neither was much of a factor defensively against the Spurs, who exploited the Cavs’ weakness at center by getting the ball to their big men, LaMarcus Aldridge (27 points) and Pau Gasol (11 points).

Until the Cavs fill this hole in their rotation, opponents are going to attack the rim and force the Cavs to improvise with Thompson and Nance.

Dialing long-distance

The Cavs were brutal from beyond the arc against the Spurs. They came into the game averaging 12.1 3-pointers per-game, second in the NBA, but were 8-of-34 for an anemic 23.5 percent as San Antonio aggressively pushed its defense to the arc.

Since they rely so heavily on 3-pointers to get scoring outside of James, the Cavs will live or die on making shots from long distance through the balance of the regular season and playoffs.

Moving up

James came up just shy of a triple-double against the Spurs with 33 points, 13 rebounds and nine assists. He ran his career assist total to 7,989 and moved into 11th place in the NBA records, passing Rod Strickland (7,987).